I see that Queen Alexandra has made a further distribution among
charities of the profits from the sale of the late Canon Fleming's
sermon, "On Recognition in Eternity." The sermon was preached on the
occasion of the death of the Duke of Clarence, and judging from its
popularity I have no doubt it is a good sermon. But I am tempted to
write on the subject by a mischievous thought suggested by the
authorship of this famous sermon. There is no idea which makes so
universal an appeal to the deepest instincts of humanity as the idea
that when we awake from the dream of life we shall pass into the
companionship of those who have shared and lightened our pilgrimage
here. The intellect may dismiss the idea as unscientific, but, as
Newman says, the finite can tell us nothing about the infinite Creator,
and the Quaker poet's serene assurance--
Yet love will hope and faith will trust
(Since He Who knows our needs is just)
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must--
defies all the buffetings of reason.
Even Shelley, for all his aggressive Atheism, could not, as Francis
Thompson points out, escape the instinct of personal immortality. In
his glorious elegy on Keats he implicitly assumes the personal
immortality which the poem explicitly denies, as when, to greet the
dead youth,
The inheritors of unfulfilled renown
Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought
Far in the unapparent.
And it is on the same note that the poem reaches its sublime and
prophetic close:--
I am borne darkly, fearfully afar;
Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of heaven,
The soul of Adonais like a star
Beacons from the abode where the eternal are.
The ink of that immortal strain was hardly dry upon the page when the
vision was fulfilled, for only a few months elapsed between the death
of Keats and the drowning of Shelley, and in the interval the great
monody had been written.
I refuse, for the sake of the feelings of Mr. J. M. Robertson and Mr.
Foote and the other stern old dogmatists of Rationalism, to deny myself
the pleasure of imagining the meeting of Shelley and Keats in the
Elysian Fields. If Shelley, "borne darkly, fearfully afar" beyond the
confines of reason, could feel that grand assurance, why should I, who
dislike the dogmatists of Rationalism as much as the dogmatists of
Orthodoxy, deny myself that beautiful solace? I like to think of those
passionate spirits in eternal comradeship, pausing in their eager talk
to salute deep-browed Homer as, perchance, he passes in grave discourse
with the "mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies." I like to think of
Dante meeting Beatrice by some crystal stream, of Lincoln wandering
side by side with Lee, of poor Mary Lamb reunited to the mother she
loved and whom she slew in one of her fits of insanity, and of an
innumerable host of humbler recognitions no less sweet.
But Canon Fleming's name reminds me that all the recognitions will not
be agreeable. I cannot imagine that eminent Court preacher showing any
eagerness to recognise or be recognised by that other eminent preacher,
Dr. Talmage. For it was Talmage's sermon on the wickedness of great
cities that Fleming so unblushingly preached _and published_ as his
own, simply altering the names of American cities to those of European
cities. Some cruel editor printed the two sermons side by side, I
think in the old _St. James's Gazette_, and the poor Canon's excuse
only made matters rather worse. The incident did not prevent him
securing preferment, and his sermon on "Recognition in Eternity" still
goes on selling. But he will not be comfortable when he sees Talmage
coming his way across the Elysian Fields. I do not think he will offer
him the very unconvincing explanation he offered to the British public.
He will make a frank confession and Talmage will no doubt give him
absolution. There will be many such awkward meetings. With what
emotions of shame, for example, will Charles I. see Strafford
approaching. "Not a hair of your head shall be touched by Parliament"
was his promise to that instrument of his despotic rule, but when
Parliament demanded the head itself he endorsed the verdict that sent
Strafford to the scaffold. And I can imagine there will be a little
coldness between Cromwell and Charles when they pass, though in the
larger understanding of that world Charles, I fancy, will see that he
was quite impossible, and that he left the grim old Puritan no other
way.
It is this thought of the larger understanding that will come when we
have put off the coarse vesture of things that makes this speculation
reasonable. That admirable woman, Mrs. Berry, in "Richard Feverel,"
had the recognitions of eternity in her mind when she declared that
widows ought not to remarry. "And to think," she said, "o' two
(husbands) claimin' o' me then, it makes me hot all over." Mrs.
Berry's mistake was in thinking of Elysium in the terms of earth. It
is precisely because we shall have escaped from the encumbering flesh
and all the bewilderments of this clumsy world that we cannot merely
tolerate the idea, but can find in it a promised explanation of the
inexplicable.
It is the same mistake that I find in Mr. Belloc, who, I see from
yesterday's paper, has been denouncing the "tomfoolery" of
spiritualism, and describing the miracles of Lourdes as "a special
providential act designed to convert, change, upset, and disintegrate
the materialism of the nineteenth century." I want to see the
materialism of the nineteenth century converted, changed, upset and
disintegrated, as much as Mr. Belloc does, but I have as little regard
for the instrument he trusts in as for the "tomfoolery" of
spiritualism. And when he goes on to denounce a Miss Posthlethwaite, a
Catholic spiritualist, for having declared that in the next world she
found people of all religions and did not find that Mohammedans
suffered more than others, I feel that he is as materialistic as Mrs.
Berry. He sees heaven in the terms of the troublesome little
sectarianisms of the earth, with an ascendancy party in possession, and
no non-alcoholic Puritans, Jews, or Mohammedans visible to his august
eye. They will all be in another place, and very uncomfortable indeed.
He really has not advanced beyond that infantile partisanship
satirised, I think, by Swift:--
We are God's chosen few,
All others will be damned.
There is no place in heaven for you,
We can't have heaven crammed.
No, no, Mr. Belloc. The judgments of eternity will not be so vulgar as
this, nor the companionship so painfully exclusive. You will not walk
the infinite meadows of heaven alone with the sect you adorned on
earth. You will find all sorts of people there regardless of the
quaint little creeds they professed in the elementary school of life.
I am sure you will find Mrs. Berry there, for that simple woman had the
root of the true gospel in her. "I think it's al'ays the plan in a
dielemma," she said, "to pray God and walk forward." I think it is
possible that in the larger atmosphere you will discover that she was a
wiser pupil in the elementary school than you were.